May 2008

Old Fashioned Words

People mock me for referring to my athletic footwear as “sneakers.” Apparently that is an old fashioned term. I am told the correct term is “tennis shoes” even if the athletic shoes in question are not designed for use on a tennis court. This seems wrong. If my athletic shoes allow me to “sneak” someplace without making noise, and are unsuitable for playing tennis, I say they should be called sneakers.

I was reminded of this the other day at the movies. The theater asks customers to silence their “cell phones.” This already seems old fashioned to me. I only own one phone. It’s in my left front pocket all the time. It’s my home phone, my work phone, and my cell phone. All of those terms will be old fashioned in your lifetime. Your kids will simply have a “phone.”

Do you remember when computers were “multimedia”? That word went away as soon as every computer could handle sound and video. The descriptor “high definition” will evaporate in about ten years too. And you won’t have to talk about “downloading” music because that’ll be the only way to get it.

Recently a friend joked about going to the library to help with his son’s school project. He said it felt like going back in time, to pre-Internet days. I wonder if libraries have an expiration date on them. I’m guessing yes.

I also wonder when the “e-“ will disappear from e-mail. I’m trying to remember the last time I wrote the kind of letter that requires a stamp. I’m guessing it was about seven years ago. I don’t even check my physical mailbox daily. I only check it when I think it might be too full for the mailman to stuff more crap in there.

I noticed the change from starting off a telephone conversation with, "How are you?", to "Where are you?". I am one of the last remaining people who have chosen to not own a cellular telephone, or any personal mobile device. If you called me on my home telephone line, I am at home, genius.

I grew up in a home environment where we used a party line- we shared the same telephone line with our neighbours. My current home telephone is not "portable", in that it requires a wire to make it work, and I don't use caller identification. What can I say, I guess I am old fashion.

I'm really shocked that you think libraries will somehow expire. Your view seems to be promulgated throughout the media, but is rooted in ignorance. A common misconception about libraries is that they are just storage facilities for physical items, like books, CDs, DVDs, etc. Most available electronic information from scholarly journals, newspapers, magazines, books, and other resources is not available for free online. Libraries nowadays subscribe to thousands of electronic periodicals and databases, providing users with a vast amount of electronic information they otherwise would not have access to. Additionally, many people don't really know how to effectively and efficiently find, use, and evaluate information. Libraries offer classes in information literacy and research skills. Visit most libraries, and you will see vibrant places of diverse activities: people on laptops using wireless Internet, children's storytime, classes in business research, and so on. Your view that libaries are antiquated and, I infer, increasingly unnecessary, isn't supported from the statistics of how many people are actually using them (including university libraries, public, special, corporate, archives, public, etc.) for a variety of reasons.

AstroTurf (copyright?) is now just Turf which used to mean real grass; that's why the manufacturer added ASTRO - so now 'astro' is gone and 'turf' means 'fake turf.'
And that's why an athletic field, etc., is referred to as having 'real grass.' .... which is actually just grass or TURF!
... Does this type of musing make me an official geezerette? ...

What about diplomacy? Minus our brief stint with Kissinger a few decades ago, what used to be the largest part of foreign policy now only exists in the life or death testosterone fueled mutation popular on 24.

Hopefully a new administration will realize the importance of discussing the possibile outcomes like blowing each other up before the US invades another country or threatens to. Apparently this administration no longer believes in peace talks or diplomacy. That was one thing Clinton actually did right!

How about this? What if world leaders all had a facebook account and formed a group. Daily communication like "wuz up ahmedinejad? just sitting around the oval office" could drastically reduce the impulse to attack each other. That'd be the day...facebook saves the world. Face it, it's better than a red telephone with every world leader. I guess communication has gone out of style.

Call me old-fashioned, but I enjoy curling up with a good book on a lazy day. I like to see the words printed out on an actual page as opposed to a screen. I love that I can tell you when a book was approximately published and how well it was cared for based on its smell and appearance.

I also enjoy the pop-hiss that emanates from a record player. It thrilled me to watch my father's face light up when he saw that I had a record player. I liked that my mother gave me some of her old 33's, as they brought back memories of when I was 8 learning to "do the twist" in 1985.

How about 'dialing" your phone... back in the days of rotary phones they had a dial... which you rotated.... to get that lovely pulse sound... now its well... a keypad... so what would the new term be? Imputing? who knows...

Computer. Or PC or Mac. Think about it - if you want to eMail, you get a Blackberry or cellphone with keyboard. Printers are becoming self-contained for printing photos. Cellphones and PDAs show webpages. And there's now devices that burn the MP3s right off the CD into your portable player. Watching DVDs on a laptop is just lame, although they look great on the Apple 20 inch display I'm looking at as I type this. Eventually the only place you'll see a desktop PC is your job or your grandma's house, and with the USA economy going like it is, they'll have to be donated from Asian schools.

I didn't read all the way through to see if anyone else posted a comment about the following, but I think "off the hook" as in leaving your phone off the hook to give callers the busy signal, and phones being "busy" will all be replaced with "screening calls" or just not answering. It seems like no one has a phone that is even capable of being left off the hook anymore.

The problem with the disapparition of "physical" books would be mainly that virtual stuff can be forged.

¿Remember the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984?

Other than that, I think some of us are just a bunch of romantics whom love the smell of books, but that doesn't mean that if all physical libraries were closed tomorrow it would necessarily mean the end of civilization or anything.

Wow. Did all of you who joke about libraries being obsolete not go to college? Or ever need to look up something in an academic journal? Yes, they are available online. No, they are not free. However, they're free to YOU if you use a library.

Reading for fun and pleasure isn't going away either and not everyone can afford to buy all the books they want. Public libraries offer a whole world of both entertainment and education to those who might not otherwise have the opportunity to experience it.

I don't mean to sound preachy. I'm just seriously astounded when I realize that there are people who don't see the value in libraries. Including you, Mr. Adams!!!